Tupac Shakur Murder Trial Begins 30 Years Later With Prosecutor Telling Jury 'Mobster' Duane 'Keffe D' Davis Ordered a 'Revenge' Killing

Rapper Tupac Shakur was shot dead in an act of gang revenge ordered by a mobster who later boasted of it, jurors heard Monday, as one of America's most anticipated trials got under way, 30 years after the murder.

Duane "Keffe D" Davis, a one-time leader of the South Side Compton Crips, one of a patchwork of gangs that ran parts of Los Angeles in the 1990s, ordered the killing after his nephew had been beaten by a rival mob, prosecutor Binu Pilal told a Las Vegas court.

"On September 7, 1996, Tupac Shakur publicly, on camera, participated in a humiliating beating of Duane Davis's nephew, Orlando Anderson," he said.

"Then, two and a half hours later... Tupac is gunned down in a drive-by shooting from a white Cadillac in an act of revenge."

Pilal said Davis did not pull the trigger, but had handed the gun to someone sitting in the back seat of his car and ordered that person to shoot the rapper.

Davis, 63, denies murder and other charges. If convicted, he faces possible life in prison without parole.

His lawyer, Michael Sanft, said prosecutors had no real proof that Davis was culpable, painting a picture of a confused police investigation that repeatedly failed to turn up a definitive version of events.

"What they are telling you, they're representing to be a fact when it really is a fiction, and it's up to you to determine what the facts are," he told jurors.

Davis has since backtracked, insisting the claims were bluster and were created by a ghostwriter to sell books.